Anybody with dreaded P0446 on a Toyota?

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Originally Posted By: chad8

It will not hurt ANYTHING. Take the light bulb out.
Usually there is a leak of a line near the canister or a valve. A good gas vapor sniffer can find it pretty quickly , but why ?


I assumed that it wouldn't hurt much if any but then I ran across this:

http://www.abc15.com/dpp/money/consumer/alerts/gas-test

Here is the quote that I am specifically referring to:

"--Check your gas cap to make sure it’s secure and tightly sealed. Almost a fifth of cars -- 17 percent -- have missing or broken gas caps. Fixing this will improve efficiency by about 1 percent -- and will protect the environment from harmful fumes or spills."

I have noticed a slight drop in gas mileage 2-3% that seems to correlate with the time frame where I got the P0446 code. Of course, it has been getting hotter and the AC has been run a little more so it is hard to say.

But also, a greater worry is that as I was driving yesterday morning I noticed a slight gasoline fume stench in the cabin. There weren't any cars in front or behind me and so it i can only assume that it was my vehicle. This is a deep concern because such fumes are very unhealthy. I will say that it is the only time that I have noticed said fumes in the last month and I didn't notice any fumes today but, nonetheless, it is a concern.
 
What a lucky break! After resetting the light and driving to the emission station, I already had pending code and 3 incomplete. My reader shows the I/M but the interface is very bad, so the shop owner gave me his Bluepoint (aka Innova) with the 3 light for the I/M status. I started driving home and on the way I noticed that number of incomplete dropping to 2. I immediately turned around and drove in to his inspection bay and kept the car running until he hooked up his official inspection machine. After the sticker, I started driving back and the check engine light turned solid within a mile of the shop! Somebody up there likes me :)

From next year on-wards, this vehicle becomes too old for the emission, so I don't have to do this gyration to get the sticker.

Now if I were a smart guy, I would have had this fixed last year and avoided all this hassle :)
 
Originally Posted By: HerrStig
There are a number of parts in that system including the canister, the rear VSV and a pressure sensor which looks for vacuum when the evap test is conducted. The canister can get a crack, the hoses can split , the rear valve can clog, or the sensor can send incorrect information.


^^ All this, and an easy way to troubleshoot is with your nose. You should not smell any fuel vapors on an OBDII vehicle. Sometimes it will point you right to the source of the leak to atmosphere.
 
That is a lucky break (up above) since a system has to go thru about 50 miles or so for a full test cycle after a reset otherwise you get a "not ready to test" result....get a couple of those here in az and ur in deep dogma.
 
Originally Posted By: chad8
Capa said:
We call this the Al Gore light. His stupidity caused this whole mess in the name of "clean Air"'. The same Al Gore who flies around in a private jet, lives in a 20000 foot mansion and wants to sell us carbon credits for hundreds of millions.
It will not hurt ANYTHING. Take the light bulb out.
Usually there is a leak of a line near the canister or a valve. A good gas vapor sniffer can find it pretty quickly , but why ?


Who's we?...and do you really think this started with al gore!? ...and "in the name of clean air" you say that like its a bad thing. I guess you're too young to remember pictures of l.a. where it looks like you need a knife to cut through the smog or rivers in the midwest so polluted they caught fire.....BTW it was Nixon, a conservative Republican president who actually started the e.P.a.
 
I had P0446 on a 96 V6 Camry; it was the EGR modulator, the first part you described, with the three hoses. I used a genuine Toyota part.

The gas cap will not fix the P0446 code, but it's worth replacing anyway, and if you do, get the OEM at the dealer. The bad gas cap code is P0442.
 
I have the P0446 code on a 2001 Avalon. I've elected to ignore it for now. We have no emissions testing here.

Actually, I was going to order the Dorman VSV, but after reading this thread, I might have my mechanic look in a different direction.

I was under the impression that in the salt belt, that rear VSV was prone to malfunctioning due to all the grit that gets kicked up back there.
 
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